Impossible and Logical
by snorting chords
Summary: McCoy and Uhura discuss the difficulties in dealing with impossible men. Kirk/McCoy & Spock/Uhura. For the ST:XI anon meme.


McCoy doesn't plan on spending his friday nights trapped in a cave on some foreign planet with Uhura. But when you work with Jim Kirk that sort of stuff just kind of happens.

"This has got to be the... tenth time." he guesses, passing the small flask to Uhura. It's one of those antique flasks, the kind people used to stash in their pockets when they needed a little pick me up. McCoy really can't think of a better time to indulge his fondness for old past times.

She takes it and knocks it back with the smallest wrinkle of her nose. Now that right there, that was what made these things bearable. Trapped in a cave sure, but at least he was trapped in one with a girl who could drink. "Actually I think it's close to twenty." comes her droll reply as she hands the flask back. Thing about it is she's not even kidding. He counts back in his mind and has to concede that she's right; they really have been in a similar situation that many times. It all comes as part of working under Jim.

"You know, he's just gonna come bounding through those rocks and expect us to be grateful."

"Because he rescued us. Of course he is." She leans over and touches his cheek with a wide grin, before slumping back against the rock wall. "You're his damsel in distress." McCoy scowls and rubs his cheek as if the gesture physically hurt him. It does, in a way. He _hates_ being helpless and it just so happens that his damned boyfriend insists on incapacitating him.

"I'd rather be rescued by the damned elf ridin' in on Santa's sleigh that have to listen to another one of Jim's 'I saved you Bones, now let's fuck' speeches."

The image of Kirk treating Bones like his Princess is too much for Uhura, and she bursts out laughing. Well, McCoy sighs, at least someone can laugh. He's not exactly fond of being trapped on some unknown planet for the third time that month. Gods only know what he's going to pick up from this place. If he didn't know Jim any better, he'd think they were screwed. But he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios and Spock is smart (not that he'd ever admit that to the cold-blooded bastard) so McCoy knows they're in the best possible hands.

God, they were really screwed.

Her laughter dies down after a minute or two and they lapse back into comfortable silence, or as comfortable as they can get sat in a dusty, rock riddled cavern with no escape. The flask passes back and forth a few more times before that's emptied, and McCoy tosses it away. They're due a shore leave soon, so he can pick up a new one before the next time they're trapped somewhere. Besides, he needs two hands to throttle Kirk with.

"He's just so impossible." He's surprised that when the silence breaks, it's him that does it, but, well, he _is_. Everything he does frustrates him, including pissing off some Ambassador alien who then decides to chase them through some blue desert and into a cave. Of course Spock and Kirk get away, they always do. And it's frustrating as hell.

Uhura shifts down and lays her head in McCoy's lap, giving him a one shouldered shrug. "He's Kirk." she says, as if that explains it all. And it does, because it's the same damn excuse he pedals whenever someone questions what the hell is going on in his mind. He's just Kirk, he does what he does. No doubt he'll be saying the exact same thing to Command in a matter of hours. If they ever get out of this cave of course. "But specifically, what are we talking about? Because if we're having a Kirk bitching moment, I'll need those specifics."

"This." McCoy growls, runs a hand down the side of his face, settles the other in her hair. It occurs to him that this - bitching about his boyfriend and playing with her hair - makes him sort of a girl, but he still has a dick so he's still very much male. Besides, he knows she likes it, has caught Spock doing the same thing, so if they're going to die down here, he wants to at least try to be comforting. The fact that it's comforting _him_ is nobody's damn business. "Getting into trouble, into situations like this because he leaps in, guns a-blasin' and just doesn't think."

By now the gentle ministrations of his fingers in her hair have caused Uhura to close her eyes, but she lifts a brow in a near perfect impression of Spock, so McCoy knows she's listening. "You've known James what, five years now? When does he ever think? Spock, he's the thinker. James is a do-er. It's the perfect balance."

"So you're saying mix the two together and we'd have a perfect boyfriend?" McCoy is quick to reply, side of his mouth curving into a sly smile. He catches the way she hesitates at the word 'thinker' like she's sick of Spock thinking all the time. Not that she'd ever say it, and now damnit they have gotten into a 'girls bitching about their boyfriend' moment. But once again McCoy consoles himself with the fact they might just die.

"Well, I wouldn't say perfect." Uhura ventures thoughtfully. "But maybe a slight improvement."

There's a long pause, because McCoy doesn't know if he wants to ask the next question. But damnit, they might die. When can you talk about these kind of things if not in a might-die scenario?

"You ever think maybe... maybe it's too hard?" His fingers stop in her hair and she almost whines at the lack of motion. Until his words register and her eyes open again, staring up at McCoy in that intense way he swears to hell she got from Spock. Like she's seeing right through him, reading his mind or something. Or maybe she just knows exactly what he means.

Thing is, he loves Kirk. Really he does. From the moment he threatened to throw up on the cocky son of a bitch sitting next to him he knew they were going to be friends. And for three and a half years they were. Great friends. He injects him with hyposprays, puts up with his manwhoring ways, and Jim calls him Bones and lets him stick random needles into his neck. It's not exactly a conventional friendship, but it always worked for them. And they both know that if the other one says jump, they wouldn't even have to ask how high because they'd just _know_. That's how close they are. So really it was only natural when Kirk told him that actually, friends wasn't quite good enough anymore. Progression, he called it, and McCoy had been too preoccupied with the tongue shoved down his throat and just how good his hand felt to argue. And he'd spent the next seventeen months and eight days not arguing with the logic (or lack thereof) of falling in love with his best friend.

But then sometimes when they're stuck like this, he can't help but wonder.

McCoy isn't a jealous man. At all. His ex-wife pretty much eye-fucked every man that walked past and he didn't care. Not because he didn't love her, because he did, but because sitting there yelling the odds wasn't going to change the fact that if she wanted to screw another man, she would. So when Kirk looks at other women, men, everything in between (he really isn't fussy, McCoy learnt that in the three years they shared a room) he doesn't care. He knows that if Kirk screws something else, he's gonna do it. He just hopes he doesn't. And McCoy is always rewarded for his loyalty because it's him Jim comes home to at night, him that Jim is under instead of the other way around. They both sort of like that role reversal but he threatens to court martial McCoy if he ever tells anyone.

So yeah, Kirk is/was a manwhore, and that really doesn't bother McCoy. It's just that he's difficult, and McCoy spent thirty years of his life fighting difficult. He may not be old, but he feels it, and he's not sure he can spend another thirty in an up-hill struggle. He just wants an easy life. But, as the voice at the back of his head reminds him, he really shouldn't have signed up for Starfleet. He's not quite sure, not convinced that his place is in the stars. His heart is still back at home, deep in the south and buried with a little girl who he's damn sure doesn't even know his name. And Kirk, he's come to realize, is the epitome of still waters run deep. He's a cocky, arrogant little son of a bitch, but McCoy knows there's a lot more under there. A lot of problems that as a doctor he knows he should be able to fix, but it just comes back to that damned difficult problem.

He doesn't have to explain any of this to Uhura, because he knows she knows. She's the only other person who could possibly know what it's like to love someone impossible. Probably more than him because not only did she go and bag someone with the emotional baggage of a commercial shuttle to Risa, but a Vulcan too. There's one word McCoy mutters every time he passes Spock in the hall, and that word is: repression. Not that he knows what it's like when they're in private, but he can't ever imagine the Vulcan being as warm and loving as Uhura would need. Girls like someone who talks about their feelings, who shows them with grand gestures that they're the only one they think about. That sort of romantic bullshit he long stopped believing in. But Uhura is still young and she has years (or he hopes) before that kind of cynicism sets in.

So while loving Kirk is hard, and pretty unbelievable, the fact that Uhura is still with Spock baffles McCoy even more. All he does is talk about logic and facts, figures, algorithms. He likes to see the world as a puzzle, because then he can solve everything. He's young too. He hasn't worked out that the world can't be solved, no matter how much logic you apply to it. But he's starting to. The destruction of Vulcan was the first lesson, because that sure as hell wasn't logical. But as much as McCoy _can_ see little cracks in his Vulcan exo-skeleton that proves his mom passed something human onto him, he's still impossible.

"Like giving up?" Uhura ponders this for a moment, worrying her bottom lip and drawing her brows together.

"I guess so."

He doesn't expect her to say yes.

"Of course I do." It's said casually, but McCoy is shocked. Uhura, who always seems so professional and together that she gives the rest of them a bad name, has doubts. It's not really anything shocking, since she is human and all, but she never says anything so he can forget that she falters too. "All the time. Especially when he's giving me another lecture about... Gods, you know I can't even remember. They all sort of mix into one hugely boring, _logical_ argument."

"So... why don't you? Quit I mean." He needs to know now, why she stays with Spock if he really pisses her off that much. Because Kirk does a damn good job at pissing him off all the time. Maybe that means something.

Shifting her head from his lap, Uhura twists up and around, settling herself cross-legged opposite him. There she goes again, he thinks, with those damn eyes. Normally he gets uncomfortable with the whole eye contact thing people are so keen about, looks everywhere but at them and feigns annoyance. But this time he risks a glance at her and she's smiling, which is sort of odd since she just confessed she's always thinking about giving up on her and Spock. But he keeps looking and he sees something else. He guesses it's hope. Unadulterated, undying hope and faith.

"It's okay to doubt yourself Leonard." He realizes that she's the only one who calls him Leonard, and the only other person beside his mother who calls Jim, James. He'd protest against it, because he _really_ hates his full name, but it doesn't sound so bad when she says it. "We're allowed to, because we're human. I doubt, because he can't, because he won't. I can do all the things he won't let himself feel. Because it is hard, I'm not even denying that - and it's going to get harder down the road, but we're all fighters."

She stops and he wonders if that's it, if that's her great advice. Because they're fighters. He knew that. He's been a fighter his whole life and that's the damn point. He doesn't want to have to fight it all the time, fight against impossible Jim because he's gotten himself into trouble again.

"You love him." It's not even a question, and she doesn't stop for his answer because they both know it's true. It's true from the hours he spends not letting go of Kirk's hand when he gets himself into some fight and ends up battered in his medical bay. "I'm not even gonna say that's enough, because it's not." Another pause, a pull of her bottom lip between her teeth as if she's fighting some internal battle about what to say next. "Spock kissed me first, you know that? He said something after, like it was a logical progression and it seemed sensible to engage in physical stimuli." Even McCoy has to laugh at that, because he can actually picture the Vulcan saying that. In fact, it sort of sounds like how Jim explained things the first time they fucked. He makes a mental note to ask Jim if he'd been asking the Vulcan for advice. "But I know he kissed me because he wanted to. And I know he's probably never going to say that, admit it. And I know it would be _so_ easy to find someone who would."

"So why don't you?" He doesn't mean to interrupt when she's sharing and it's not like there's a rush because he still can't hear anyone coming to rescue them. It's a damn good job they got into the cave before they got injured, or Spock and Kirk taking their sweet time could have gotten them killed. But McCoy really wants to know why, needs to know.

"Because when I fall asleep at night, he's there, holding me. Because I know that I'd never be happy with someone that was anything less than impossible. Because the little moments when he's so easy, when he's half asleep and all he can say is my name, they make it worth all the fighting and all the struggling." She rests a hand on her swollen stomach, rubbing taut skin. "And because when I told him he was going to be a dad, he did something highly illogical. He smiled."

"The hob-goblin smiled? That I'd pay to see."

"Next kid, I'll take a picture."

An hour later, Kirk and Spock finally turn up, blasting through the rocks with such effortless ease that McCoy wonders why the hell they didn't just do that sooner. True to form, Jim bounds over, sliding an arm around his waist and drawing his head close for a kiss. "You owe me for saving your ass." he grins, forgetting all about the fact they were in the cave is his fault in the first place.

"Told you." Uhura sings as Spock guides her out, one hand on her arm, another curled around her waist so the tips of his fingers are touching her stomach. "Damsel in distress."

***

Later that night when everyone is cleaned up and The Enterprise is safely warped away from the damned planet, McCoy lays in bed. It's Jim's quarters tonight, payment for coming to his rescue. Although he maintains if he'd been allowed to take his phaser into the Ambassadorial Palace in the first place, he wouldn't have needed rescuing. But he lets Jim have his victory, and he sort of enjoys these quarters more than his own. For one they have a window, letting him watch the stars zip by as he lays in bed.

"Len." He hears Jim mutter behind him, feels hands circle his waist, and he realizes that he's moved away from him. He shifts back complacently, allows Jim to press sleepy kisses to his neck before he falls back to sleep. It's only then that he realizes Jim didn't call him Bones. He turns over onto his side, careful not to disturb the younger mans hands from his middle, and watches as he sleeps.

"You're damn near impossible." he mutters, eyes taking in every feature, every scar, the way his eyelids flutter in some pleasant dream. He smiles, a real smile that doesn't have a bitter side, as he thinks that he's the reason he's sleeping easy. "But I wouldn't change a thing." It's nice and easy, and as he rolls back into his back and presses a lazy kiss to Kirk's forehead, McCoy thinks that maybe his heart is split in two, and one half is right here in the stars where it should be.


End file.
